I was a similar age when I used to write steamy fiction in my workbook if I finished my homework early. I'd have been mortified if any adult had seen it, never mind my mum (it was well pre-www): I would pretend you haven't seen it, and stick to your usual Internet safety briefing - but perhaps more frequently if you think it's possible she's interacting with strangers over it.

Reputable fanfic sites require users to confirm that they're eighteen/legally an adult in their country before they can access adult rated stories. Adults who use those sites will assume that anyone they interact with is also an adult. I think there might be a conversation to be had about what sites she's been accessing, and how.

(And in my experience some of the stuff on ff.net is dire, but that probably is the stuff written by twelve year olds.)

I did the same, at the same age. Writing homosexual fiction was easier as I was able to distance myself from it, as I wasn't excited or turned on by it, I was able to explore sexual relationships without it being me, or nearly me as they were both men. I don't really see the issue. She's probably discovered masturbation, and is exploring her own sexuality no that of others.

I may well be posting the complete opposite to most, but it wouldnt bother me, by all means have na internet safety chat so she knows to never share persona entails etc.

Definitely tell her not to use her real name for the purposes of writing and publishing smutfic! She needs a pen name. For all she knows, one of her teachers might be there, under a pen name, and recognise her.

My dd at the same age wrote a fair bit for Wattpad, and is very glad now that she used a non tracable pen name. Not because she was writing smut (just reading lots of it!) but because her writing was very obviously that of a 12 year old and she is a bit ashamed of it now (although one of her stories had 40,000 reads, so there are a whole load of not very discerning readers out there).

OP I'd let your dd know you found her story really easily and knew it was her and so other people may well do the same, and talk to her about internet safety. Otherwise I'd just rib her a little bit. My dd is also attracted to homosexual erotic fiction (and porn I'm sorry to say). I think it feels safer somehow.

She isn't using her full name but there isn't anyone with her name in the whole of her city comprehensive so it narrows it down. She has posted that she lives in GB an I personally do not know another person with her name.

From my experience whatpad is full of writings by young teens or pre teens. My two DDs have both spent time writing and reading on Whatpad. I did limit the use of it because from what I could see the spelling and grammar was appalling. Some of the stuff they wrote/read was a little on the edge for me but they seem to have outgrown it for now.

Ah smutty fanfic written by 12 year olds - Legolas by Laura being one of the classics (I too am sniggering at the idea of fanfic.net having well written stuff on there - and I speak as someone who has a lot of my stuff posted on there). As for reputable sites checking age, well, in the case of AO3, "checking" consists of a warning flashing up saying "this could contain mature content, are you sure you want to go ahead?"

She's probably gained most of her knowledge of gay smut from reading other people's stuff - some of it is pretty eye-watering. At about age 13 my best friend and I used to write some pretty horribly violent, very graphic sci-fi horror stories - this was back in the late 70s! Hand written in notebooks back then. We grew out of it. (I think in my case it was a particularly horrible sado-masochistic sex/torture scene in a James Herbert novel which cured me of reading that stuff, aged about 14 - haven't read a horror novel since).

Totally agree with encouraging her to come up with a nom-de-plume (I have an incredibly googleable real name and a professional reputation I'd quite like to keep intact, so my fanfic life is hermetically sealed from the rest of my life). She may well be interacting with all sorts of people via personal messages depending on the site, so I'd also give her the reminder talk about "you could be talking to anyone".

Oh dear, at 13 I too was writing fan fiction that I thought was very steamy. I recently found it saved on my computer and opened it - it was awful, mortifying and very obviously written by someone with no experience of what she was writing about.

With that said, I knew many kids the same age who did exactly the same thing. We were all very nerdy, awkward, and apparently very bad at writing. I think it's a way of coming to terms with the adult ideas and concepts that young teens are starting to learn, but not actually taking part in. By writing about it, you explore the topics without actually doing anything in real life.

I'm afraid I don't have any advice about what to do in your situation- if my mum had ever found the stuff I'd been writing, I'd have been mortified